Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Hola! Guten tag! errr that's all I've got.

Here we are at the close of week 36 and, once again, I have no progress to report. I actually ended up rescheduling my book club (originally tonight) because only one of the six of us has read our book and she lives in California (several thousand miles away!)

I did very little reading last week and what reading I've done this week has been for work so it won't count for a prompt.

In Michigan, where I live, it was back-to-school week for the kids. My youngest started school this year so that was a bit exciting. We're hoping to settle into a more regular routine.

I'm going to open a thread for those who have finished the entire challenge as we have a few already and a few more closing in on the finish line.

Question of the week:
With so many books in the news lately (The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two, The Underground Railroad), has "hype" ever ruined a book for you?

I don't know about "hype" per se but I did fall for the talk around Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections back when it was first published before and during the Oprah controversy. And, to this day, I refer to it is The Horrible The Corrections. What an awful book IMO. I even forced it upon two male friends who were more of the literary fiction fans than I at the time and both agreed it was awful.

Watch for a group message to come in the next day or so after I've opened all the monthly challenge and other threads.

And now a few words from you ... what have you read this week?

I finished two books this week - one for this challenge and one for around the year. So I'm at 33/41 for this challenge and only 26/52 for around the year.

I finished Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps for my self-improvement book. I liked it. She started out by saying some of it wouldn't apply to everyone - and that's totally true. But there were some tidbits that I took away from it.

I listed to I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed this. Love her movies - just not this book. I liked the part about reading emails though - I could relate to that. Getting distracted because this email might be important just to see that once again its junk mail. lol

QOTW I succumb to the spell of book hype. I remember everyone talking about The Ocean at the End of the Lane and I went in to it thinking that it was going to be the best book ever. I walked away thinking that I must have read a different book than the rest of the world. Earlier this year I tried reading Carry On but the hype behind that was too much for me. I am going to try that one again maybe with the audiobook version. Just goes to show that everyone is different! Someones favorite book ever might not be your cup of tea!

I finally finished The Sound and the Fury for my Oprah book club pick. It was hard to get through. I had to look up information on the story because I had no idea what was going on for the first half of the book (especially with two characters having the same name). I think stream of conscience isn't really my thing. This puts me at 29/41. I'll be on vacation next week so hopefully I get some reading done.

QOTW: I don't think hype around a book has ever really ruined a book for me. My brother always took care of ruining important books for me. I have picked up books because of their hype. I remember my pastor vehemently telling the congregation not to read the The Da Vinci Code, so of course I had to. And I enjoyed it.

I am still struggling to find enough time to read like I want to! I have started trying to take walks in the evening. I need to download some audiobooks to listen to instead of podcasts!

I finally finished one book in the last week:

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny - I enjoyed the first book in this series very much. This second book was a bit more scattered. It felt kind of jumpy, and I struggled to follow where she was going some of the time. I love the characters and overall writing enough to continue with the series though. I hear it continues to improve :) I don't currently have this one assigned to an open prompt, but I am always readjusting and reassigning so it might slide into a spot eventually!

I am working on three books right now:

Longbourn by Jo Baker - this will be my second "book recommended by someone you just met". A FB group I'm in did a book exchange, and this is the book my assigned partner sent me. I hadn't had any interaction with her before so she is definitely someone I just met!

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - I am struggling with this one. I keep waiting for something to actually HAPPEN. I think maybe things started to pick up a little last night, but it has been a much slower read than I anticipated.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - listening to this one on audio. I think the narrator is fabulous, but I'm not sure I will continue with the series. This one is my occupation book.

Question of the Week: Honestly, hype is a big turn off for me. When everyone is talking about some amazing book I usually lose interest. I may eventually read it, but it would probably be 5 years after publishing. I don't read all that many new release books anyway. As to whether the hype ruins the book for me, yes sometimes it does. I avoid book recommendations from the media in general and tend to trust more in what my fellow book nerds are reading. There have certainly been some hype books that I have not enjoyed. The older I get the more comfortable I am in not having read the latest "it" book. I have no troubles telling friends that I haven't read it and may not ever :)

Hello, all!

Still at 35/41 for this challenge. I'm in the middle of my busiest period of the year at work and just had out-of-town guests for 4 days, so I've had less time to read than usual. And on top of that, I've DNF'd several books recently (Lab Girl, The Fifteenth Minute, My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Beer Sommeliers, and Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training), which has really slowed me down.

I'm still working on the audiobook of The Assistants - hopefully I'll wrap that up this week. Otherwise, I'm just in the mood to read romance non-stop.

QOTW: Hype can absolutely ruin a book for me; if I hear enough that something is going to be great, my expectations can't help but be higher, you know? I just read Lisa Kleypas's Cold-Hearted Rake, which was my first Kleypas and a book a dear friend couldn't stop raving about, so I was expecting really great things! And it was just okay for me - not terrible, but certainly not what I'd expected based on the hype.

Hola and Bonjour! Yesterday was the first day of school for my kids, too; we are having bus drama with my middle-schooler, because she has a new driver and said driver (whom I have yet to meet) INSISTS that our bus stop is not on her route! Grr two mornings in a row now we've stood there ... no bus. And yesterday afternoon she dropped my daughter off last because she was insisting that our street is not her route. I've now called the bus line three times, each time they confirm that it IS our bus and they promise to correct the problem.

Anyway ... This week I finished three books and DNFed one.

Lab Girl - this is a case of hype leading me to expect more. It was good, but I was disappointed that it wasn't better. This would fit the "autobiography" or "2016" prompts.

All In - a Swedish contemporary romance set in the high stakes corporate banking world (part of my effort to read more translations) - meh. This would fit the "set in Europe," "set during summer," "blue cover," "translation," or "2016" prompts.

The Woman in Cabin 10 - a real case of hype being wrong - I thought this was going to be "all that" and it was SO disappointing! This would fit "set in Europe," "murder mystery," or "2016" prompts.

My DNF was The Queen of the Night - SOOO slow! I had the audiobook checked out from the library, and when another audiobook I'd had on hold came in, I dropped this one like a dead raccoon.

QOTW I approach hyped books with caution! I simultaneously expect them to be amazing AND expect to be disappointed. When they are just "good" or "ok" I am so disappointed, it's as if they were awful. But when they are good, they are very good!! (To paraphrase one of my mother's favorite nursery rhymes.)

Sitting at 29/41 and working on The Round House for my NBA Winner. I only have to read 3 books a month for Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec to finish on time so I'm taking my time if I need to.

Hype hasn't really ruined many books for me, but I do approach hyped books with great caution

One book finished, for the challenge, just in time - yeah, I've taken to rushing it for our little Thursday checks! Actually, I had two books on the way, and I thought I'd finish one of them, but since the one I'd just started was much shorter I decided to finish this one instead!

✅✅30. A book with a blue cover (2): Martin Amis, Night Train , Vintage, 1998 (1st ed. 1997).



Quite frankly I'm not quite sure what to do with this book. Purportedly a police procedural, but clearly not quite that; an American detective story written by an English novelist in a somewhat artificial American idiom... Haven't even rated it; I might do that at a later time!

That puts me at 56/82; I've slowed down quite a bit since summer began.

QOTW: Most hyped books of contemporary French litt are such utter crap than even thinking about them would be a waste of time! And I often miss the hype about Anglo-American books altogether. Plus, I often read hyped books a long time after the hype have subsided!

To be honest, being disappointed by an over-hyped book has happened to me from time to time; although quite frankly the opposite happens more often: reading a book and finding it pretty good, despite the hype - which would tend to lower my expectations to abysmal levels!

9/2-9/8 Checkin

I finished 3 books this week, one for each of my challenges.

For PopSugar, I read Kamikaze Kangaroos!: A trip around Oz in a van called Rusty by Tony James Slater for my road trip book. Hilarious!

For Around the Year in 52 Books, I read Farewell, Miss Zukas by Jo Dereske for my wild card. This book is about a librarian for those of you looking for an occupation book.

For Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge I read Thrush Green by Miss Read for a book published the decade I was born. It seemed a bit dated but was pleasant.

QOTWI don't think hype has ruined a book for me because I don't usually base my reading on bestsellers. I usually wait a bit to read a book everyone is talking about. One book I'm debating reading is Gone Girl. I remember it being hyped when it first came out but I didn't want to read it then. Even though I know some of the basics of the plot, I'd like to give it a try to see what it's like.

I haven't read anything for PopSugar this week, since I'm still waiting for the books to come from the library. I just wanted to comment on the question of the week.

I don't think hype has ever really ruined a book for me, but it's definitely put me off trying them. I refused to read Harry Potter for a long time at first because I thought anything that over-hyped couldn't possibly be good. The only reason I read it was because our former school librarian visited us for a "book talk" where he read a page or two of several books, including the first Harry Potter.

I tend to wait until the hype dies down a bit before I try the book, but in the end, a good book is a good book.

Bonjour,

I finished Atonement for my European book. I liked it very much even if I knew what was going to happen since I've seen the movie. Now starting my satyrical book.

Since I am mostly reading in french, the hype is gone when the book is translated. This year, I remember being disappointed in The girl of the train.

Howdy!

I'm still plugging away in book mode, I finished three this week! This is my first reading challenge of this kind, and if I continue doing them, I think my pattern will be to get booked up mostly in summer and fall. I'm also a huge movie nerd and try to watch all of the SAG/Golden Globe/BAFTA/Oscar nominated movies (Yes, ALL of them), so as soon as those are announced I go into movie mode for the winter and into spring. I think I can get my book list down pretty low before the Oscar bait comes out in December.

This week I finally finished Furiously Happy after having put it down for several months. It read more like a blog than a book to me so it was easy to be distracted from it.

I enjoyed listening to Elija Wood read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, once I stopped flinching every time he used that word. Egad. I used this for my road trip book. This road just happened to be a river.

This afternoon I finished my recommended by someone you just met book. The President's Hat tells the adventures of François Mitterrand's hat after he forgets it in a brasserie, and how the lives of the people who find it change. I enjoyed it and it left me with a nice, pleasant feeling.

I am at 24/41.

I can't decide if I want to start Station Eleven or Miss Peregrine next!

QOTW: For me the hype factor depends on how early I got in there. The longer you hear the hype, the more your expectations are raised. Luckily I bought my first Potter before I had heard of him, I just liked the cover. I think a lot of buzzy books lean to struggle/tragic/hardship stories, and I can only take so much of those because I have some wicked depression. (This is why I read a lot of middle grade adventures.) Hype can get me to pick it up and read the jacket. If I think I might like it, I'll try it. If I think it's too sad for me that month, I'll pass. I understand that just because something is "good" doesn't mean I'll enjoy it.

Catharina wrote: "never watched Star Wars. Or Indiana Jones. "

HAHA! Reading this in my Star Wars t-shirt with my Indy ringtone.

I also quite enjoyed Not My Father's Son, did you do the audiobook? It's even better with the accent. I had this for autobiography but shuffled things around and it's currently my celebrity book.

Catharina wrote: "Haha I am going to watch them, but I'm enjoying the shocked gasps far too much still :P I can literally stop a party by the words "I've never watched Star Wars" ;)

Yes, I did the audiobook, and I'm so glad I did! So good, and if I loved him before I love him even more now, it felt so honest. "

It's such a good one there is (was?) a TV/radio show in the UK called I've Never Seen Star Wars where the host challenges celebrities to try things they've never done before. It's kind of a PopSugar challenge for life!

I think it's really hard to beat a memoir/autobiography audiobook read by the author. There's a whole extra layer hearing their stories in their own voices. I still need to listen to Agatha Christie dictating excerpts of her autobiography.

Haha several people saying they avoided Harry Potter because of the hype - I did the same thing! No way was I going to read that, it couldn't possibly be as good as "they" said!!! Finally my then-husband got me the first four books in a box set (I guess he didn't think I really meant it, or - more likely - he just didn't know what to get me that year), and I read the first one and wow that was good and I ended up buying the rest as they came out (I even bought the last two in hardcover because I couldn't stand to wait for the paperback edition! unheard of for me!).

Same with The Hunger Games - I was SO SURE I wouldn't like it, but a friend really loved it, so I tried it, and loved it!

(I read Twilight long before the Big Deal Hype started - that book was actually out for a while before the hype - so I wasn't affected by any buzz.)

I finished the challenge this week!! My final book, The Shadow of the Wind, was a book I'd read before and loved, but I had totally forgotten 100% of the plot. I read it for book translated to English, and it's just as amazing as the last time I read it!

So, 41/41!!

I'm not sure if I'll keep posting here what I'm reading, because now I'm turning to all the books that didn't fit in prompts and I put aside! Right now, that is:

Eligible - It's not terribly well written, but I'm still enjoying it because I just cannot put aside books based on Pride and Prejudice
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon - Not too far in, because Eligible is taking my concentration
There is a Tide - Back on my Agatha Christie quest!

There are some good examples above, but I would say Gone Girl is a good example for me. I listened to the hype on that and read it and HATED it (I might be the only one). So I really ignore it now.

Fannie wrote: "Since I am mostly reading in french, the hype is gone when the book is translated. This year, I remember being disappointed in The girl of the train."

I read it in English and still felt let down so maybe that one isn't a translation thing :)

Christophe wrote: "yeah, I've taken to rushing it for our little Thursday checks!"

Yes, I find the weekly check-ins to be a good motivator as well! I'm determined to at least be able to report SOMETHING as accomplished!

Last week, I completed Illuminae, which was a very interesting and creative book. I can't use it for this challenge, but I was able to sneak it in for another, so at least that's something.

QOTW: Hype will definitely influence my decision on whether I want to read a book, but I don't often end up reading them until the hype has died down, because I have so many books to read already!